On a spring Saturday afternoon Sharon and I went along to Richmond Park to support at one of the main races in our running clubs annual diary – The Baker Cup.

“The Baker Cup is a 3 mile handicap on the road, which brings to a close the current cross-country season. Runners are given a handicap allowance dependant upon their ability, with the slowest runner going off first, and the remainder following at 10 second or greater intervals. The fastest runner, the ‘scratch man’ goes off last. If everyone runs to the form predicted by the Handicapper, Mike Rowland, then they should all finish together. The winner receives the Baker Cup, which is presented at the annual prizegiving, and is held by the recipient for one year. The Baker Cup was first competed for in 1911, having been presented to the Club by Fred W Baker in 1910.”

It’s a fantastic race to support and I wanted to try and get some photos of the winner and one or two group shots. The group shots didn’t quite come out as I’d hoped (people were a little spread out more than I’d hoped for) but I got a few great shots of winner Amelie H. who ran an absolutely fantastic race and pushed so so hard to get a well deserved win.

Running free magazine (runningfreemag.co.uk), the UK’s only independent free monthly magazine for runners ran a special feature on parkrun (parkrun.com) in their March 2011 issue. To go alongside a double page spread about these superb weekly free 5k runs they wanted a number of photos to help promote parkrun.

In addition to three of our photos that accompany the article they also agreed to run a parkrun photo for the front cover. From a selection of shots we agreed on the one shown as it didn’t single out individual super fast runners and showed some of the all-inclusivity that makes parkrun so great. I also love the fact that this is a running event (it’s not a race) where runners don’t need to wear running numbers pinned to their vests or timing chips on their ankles – and they still get accurate finish times week after week.

“Casual runners are often turned off newsstand running magazines by high cover prices. They can perceive them as being for more hardcore athletes and are intimidated by the jargon and higher-level advice. Running Free takes a different approach, speaking directly to these readers, welcoming them into the sport.”

Each monthly issue of Running Free is handed out free of charge to running shop customers, usually at the point of sale and after less than a year after launch (December 2008) the print magazine was distributing 30,000+ copies per month.